What Are You Working On? (september 2025)
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The 'Ask HN: What are you working on?' thread showcases a diverse array of personal projects and ideas, highlighting the creativity and innovation within the HN community.
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- 01Story posted
Sep 29, 2025 at 4:58 PM EDT
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Sep 29, 2025 at 5:04 PM EDT
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149 comments in Day 1
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Oct 13, 2025 at 6:00 AM EDT
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Random question as I don't know a ton of framing... is your sample model missing jack studs on the large door opening?
Last year PlasticList discovered that 86% of food products they tested contain plastic chemicals—including 100% of baby food tested. The EU just lowered their "safe" BPA limit by 20,000x. Meanwhile, the FDA allows levels 100x higher than what Europe considers safe.
This seemed like a solvable problem.
Laboratory.love lets you crowdfund independent testing of specific products you actually buy. Think Consumer Reports meets Kickstarter, but focused on detecting endocrine disruptors in your yogurt, your kid's snacks, whatever you're curious about.
Here's how it works: Find a product (or suggest one), contribute to its testing fund, get detailed lab results when testing completes. If a product doesn't reach its funding goal within 365 days, automatic refund. All results are published openly. Laboratory.love uses the same methodology as PlasticList.org, which found plastic chemicals in everything from prenatal vitamins to ice cream. But instead of researchers choosing what to test, you do.
The bigger picture: Companies respond to market pressure. Transparency creates that pressure. When consumers have data, supply chains get cleaner.
Technical details: Laboratory.love works with ISO 17025-accredited labs, test three samples from different production lots, detect chemicals down to parts per billion. The testing protocol is public.
So far a couple dozen products have received some funding, six products have been fully funded (five product results published, the sixth is at the lab as I write this!)
You can browse products, add your own, or just follow specific items you're curious about: https://laboratory.love
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/declining-testosterone-le...
And anecdotally, I've still been forming goals and shrugging off failure five years into suppressing most of my endogenous testosterone with exogenous estrogen
Have you had your levels checked?
And yes there are certainly other factors, but that's not what the original comment was talking about?
It is extremely weird to me that countries don't do that on taxpayers money and show the results publicly, this is what they should do.
The completed entry should include the date of the test results, so currency can be judged,
Ideally the completed entry should contain a scan of the full test report from each of the accredited laboratories.
LLMs wrote 99% of the code.
I don't know if it's a joke, in the EU we do enjoy a lot more strict regulations, good and bad sometimes, but to me the US system just seems more 'reactionary' rather than proactive.
I keep telling my euro-friends that food and health regulation could potentially be enforced by the free market more effectively than by corruptible government, and this is a perfect example of this.
I'd want to see all products I can buy in there, with all possible chemical, ingredients and nutrients, and clear indications of good/bad, a little bit like in Yuka. You should partner with them maybe even!
2. The "more free" market in the US seems to have produced worse food, based on what I am reading here
I guess the words "could" and "potentially" are doing quite a bit of heavy lifting here.
Either way, I agree it's a cool project! The transparency is needed, on both sides of the pond.
Also, speaking of the "more free market in the US", my answer is that you don't hate capitalism, you hate crony capitalism.
What distinguishes this from 'you don't hate socialism, you just hate every so-called socialist government'? I know this seems like lazy smartarsery, but I'm genuinely curious whether you think we have real-world examples of countries doing capitalism right -- and, if not, why that's not a bad sign in the same way that a dearth of examples of socialist success stories is a bad sign.
How can I submit my products for testing?
It just needs to be a product that's available for purchase.
I'm guessing it's limited to US products and US labs? Would love something similar in Europe and/or EU, but it isn't clear if you're limited to US/North America right now, would be nice if it was a bit clearer up front :)
I'm not technically limited to US products, but I can (currently) only test products that can be shipped TO the United States.
Blueprint Quantified, which is linked in the below comments, went live after these conversations. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Where are the safe levels limits to interpret test results? This would be a small addition that would make any of the results interpretable. I had to open the PlasticList website to get the baseline safe thresholds for each chemical and to do some rough approximations.
> "What does 'LOQ' mean in your results? > > Limit of Quantification (LOQ) is the lowest concentration we can reliably measure. Results below LOQ are marked "<LOQ" - this doesn't mean zero, just below our measurement threshold."
IMO this definition should be on every results page, since most of the pages have more LOQs than anything else.
I like the UI, really cool project.
I think the prompting might need more work to make it natural though. I just tried a "hungover chat with 996" worker, and the responses seemed to be lacking a little too much context
Services with stubbed endpoints, UIs with placeholder components, Dockerfiles/Terraform/K8s infra, E2E tests (via declared flows), Github/Gitlab epics/issues/subissues
It's also got github/gitlab webhook integration, so you can do stuff like trigger agents reactively when events occur on a repo, it includes cloudflare tunnel support so you can set up webhooks even in a local dev environment, and the project generator is fully customizable.
There was "choker" back in the day, which I actually never heard about since I wasn't into chess back then. But (1) there was no web version, and (2) it had a specific gameplay that seems too slow for my taste. My version is highly customizable on the setup/rounds/rules, too. From my research, the original was also overrun by bots.
> It’s a cool concept, but terrible app design and it’s all just bots you connect with, making it terribly easy to win almost every game
It sounds like this game needs a better AI opponent then? I don’t know anything about this game but something that learned from your gameplay and figured out how to beat you would be very cool.
Behind the scenes, we're doing real time code gen to power the monsters!
Would love feedback!
Along with all of that, still working on a lot of stuff using Jason[4] / AgentSpeak[5]. I created a fork[6] of Jason that is meant to be easier to integrate with Spring Boot, and to take more of a "run headless on a server" approach, which meant taking out references to a Swing based in-process logging/management tool. In place of that, I'm implementing a JMX based management interface, and recently I've started to work on replacing the old Swing app with a JavaFX app that can connect using JMX Remoting.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Semantic-Information-Processing-Marvi...
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Parallel-Distributed-Processing-Vol-F...
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Semantic-Networks-Explorat...
[4]: https://github.com/jason-lang/jason
If you want, drop me and email (prhodes@fogbeam.com) and maybe we can set something up.
Launched the initial version a couple of weeks ago and making good progress, trying to share as much of the process as I can on X.
Backend API can be used by any client, but I also built an open source agent in Go that makes setup really easy.
Currently working on a proper log viewer, alerts and visualization improvements.
It started out with bindings for the DOM, Web, and Browser APIs, but as of today I now have custom Web Components support (which is a big deal considering Go's type system quirks).
Tomorrow I'm gonna polish some of the UI components and start refactoring my git-evac [2] repo management tool which is the first app using the gooey framework.
Haven't tested the typecasting that's required for the components yet though, they might break because of some generics quirks (e.g. Wrap/Unwrap helper methods).
I've been using web components as a vehicle to automate and auto validate accessibility aspects as much as possible, because I think the only way to truly make things sustainably accessible is to find a way to unburden the developer by either inferring as much as possible or making validation a natural part of development rather than a separate testing cycle that will invariably cause accessibility support to become out of sync.
It sounds like you might have similar concerns. Do you have any insights to share along these lines for Gooey?
These work quite nicely together with a screen reader because you don't have to intercept the focus event (or others) that people browsing in caret mode or similar would use to navigate the page.
Additionally I decided to make single page applications using a main and section[data-view] elements so that the HTML and CSS alone is enough to hint screen readers on what's visible and so that there are no javascript codes necessary to tween things around, the JS/WebASM side of things literally just sets a data-view property on the main element.
The whole idea behind gooey and the way it is structured is:
- all states must be serializable in HTML
- Static HTML and CSS makes the page usable (apart from web forms and REST APIs, that's developer provided code)
- Dynamic WebASM on top essentially translates the DOM to be interactive, so that things can be animated based on changing data or streams coming from the backend. All interactivity is rendered directly into the DOM, so that it can be serialized again at all times.
- Communication between Client and Server is JSON or any other Go implemented Marshaller, and using Fetch API behind the scenes.
I decided on purpose to not provide XMLHTTPRequest and other old APIs because I'm relying on WebASM and "modern Browser engines" anyways. This way I kinda force users of gooey to use modern JS from the WebASM context and I save a whole lot of trouble with compatibility issues (and don't get into the unsemantic div fatigue like React does, for example).
Currently at MVP stage, no domain yet.
For most bot visits, there should not be a single database request.
I found neverthrow's api to be not very ergonomic so I built my own little version.
fp-ts has an Either type e.g. but there's plenty of such libraries.
I thought that most of the use cases for such a library could be boiled down to a single function that can wrap throwable pieces of code and convert their result to a Result type and that's exactly what I implemented.
I also wanted minimal amount of methods for the Result variant classes and delightful method names so I tried to do that and I'm happy with the results! (no pun intended)
It's just a little side project, not much thought has been put inside of it except the core idea behind it that I just explained.
We are looking at:
-Objective data: signals from incident management tools (Rootly/PagerDuty), GitHub, and Slack
-Self-reported data: asking the engineers how they feel via short survey
From this, we generate a CBI score (Copenhagen Burnout Inventory). We're still in beta, but we've received positive feedback from our beta testers, especially from manager of large and distributed orgs.
It's fully open-source, you can test it out locally https://github.com/Rootly-AI-Labs/rootly-burnout-detector-we...
Alternatively, we offer a hosted version with mock data, allowing you to play with it. https://www.oncallburnout.com/
If you have any feedback or ideas, shoot them my way :)
Notebook to do it yourself here: https://github.com/dbish/bespoke-books-ai-example
I think there are a lot of really fun projects possible now in the child book creation space, particularly as you build tools that they can use themselves (like adding voice interfaces to building a book or story).
This is outside my 996 job of AI Agent/Assistant infra + ops :)
My hope for this project is to get enough demand that I have an excuse to figure out a printing option myself and buy some new equipment :)
It’s a labor of love, but I love it!
I’m currently building a simulation engine that lets you forecast your spending, build scenarios (like taking a year off, getting a cat, move to a new city, etc based on your current spending patterns and assets.
It’s great fun to have a project of one’s own to just toil away on.
The name isn't confusing, per se ("get married to/be exclusive with your finances", OK), but it also isn't very strong... "financé" is also very strange and awkward to pronounce as a native English speaker. Probably because it comes across more as Spanish-seeming despite it being a play on a French work.
My Financé, because you should love your finances.
To your point, I think it’s hard to notice the spelling, and hard to figure out how to pronounce it.
It also is the same spelling as My Finance, which is tricky to rank for on Google.
Overall, it seems like it has potential to be a fun brand, but the constant confusion has led me to strongly consider a “rebrand”.
same misreading
I'm blaming typoglycemia
Examples:
- Policies are frequently subjective. Hard to codify, but LLMs can evaluate them more like a security engineer would. "IAM policies should use least privilege." What is "least" enough? "Admin ports shouldn't be exposed to the Internet." What's an admin port?
- Security engineers are stretched thin. LLMs can watch PRs for potentially risky changes that need closer human review. "PR loosens authz/authn." "PR changes network perimeter configuration."
- Traditional check runs (SAST, IaC, etc.) flood PRs with findings. Security doesn't have time to review them all. Devs tends to ignore them. Frequent false positives. LLMs can draw attention to the important ones. "If the findings are unusual for this repo, require the author to acknowledge the risk before merging."
Given that this is a major release, there are fairly wide error bars on that; it could be as much as 3 weeks earlier if the first release candidate turns out to be perfect, and of course it could be later if things go badly (but I very much hope to get it out by the end of 2025).
https://github.com/scallyw4g/bonsai
I also wrote a metaprogramming language which generates a lot of the editor UI for the engine. It's a bespoke C parser that supports a small subset of C++, which is exposed to the user through a 'scripting-like' language you embed directly in your source files. I wrote it as a replacement for C++ templates and in my completely unbiased opinion it is WAY better.
Great to see something along those lines but with much better visuals.
https://jacquesmattheij.com/snapshot4.png
Apologies for the low resolution, I don't think I have a better one.
Basically I've realised GraphQL has taken me as far as it can, and I should've gone with REST to start with. That, and after I finish the first milestone (uptime checks + cron job monitors), I'll be able to start building a proper terraform provider, and audit logs.
https://onlineornot.com/, since early 2021.
Also, shipping Bedtime Bulb v2 next month. This is a hybrid LED-incandescent design meant for the evening that is the best of both worlds: low blue light, high color quality, perfect compatibility with dimmers, 10x less flicker than incandescent, includes near infrared, low energy use, long lifespan [1].
[0]: https://restfullighting.com/products/restful-atmos-preorder
[1]: https://restfullighting.com/products/bedtime-bulb-v2-preorde...
Website: https://colanode.com Repo: https://github.com/colanode/colanode
This is mostly a nostalgia play--I'm pining for a time when app development was much easier. I'm trying to apply lessons from early Rapid Application Development while still providing a full-featured language.
I confess that I haven't gotten any traction at all, but I find it incredibly useful for my own consulting business, so I'm going to keep on working on it.
I have experienced knowledge gaps and blind spots that I am attempting to fix. For example most users worry about security of hashed passwords and yet they do not realize that the TOTP (eg Google Authenticator) use symmetric encryption and quite a lot of the authentication providers store the private key in plain text in their database. List goes on...
The community is moving fast though. Now higgsfield allows using arrows and pointers to edit the video but so far, no one is doing a good camera control visually.
https://github.com/brainless/nocodo
Self-hosted, multiple models, bring your own keys and subscriptions, unlimited projects, tasks, web based, runs on your cloud server.
We're getting close! It's just a matter of polishing and polishing and polishing, but I'm really excited about how close we are to launch.
I've been down a prime numbers rabbit hole. Trying to see the largest prime I can generate in a browser.
My citizenship wait times page (https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/citizenship-wait-times) has also gotten enough feedback to be useful since its release last month. I'd like to make it more useful with better visualisations.
Now I'm working on another iteration of my health insurance calculator (https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/health-insurance-calculator). It's kind of a big deal both because it's a huge financial decision for recent immigrants, and because it funds a big chunk of all the free stuff I'm putting out. This is especially important with ChatGPT and AI summaries halving my traffic. This iteration will recommend health insurance combinations that work for a visa application and for a long-term stay in Germany. It will provide far better explanations.
At the same time, I'm testing a new insurance broker with far shorter response times, so people can directly ask an expert to help them choose. They're reachable via Whatsapp, and that made a huge difference in how people get advice. It worked so well that I want to do the same for other topics. I'm already talking with an immigration lawyer who's interested.
It is a desktop app built with Electron and React. I built to help newlywed couples to quickly sort thousands of wedding photos with a Tinder style swipe UI. It is offline first, fully private, and offers one click export of your selected pictures.
I started building it earlier this year after going through my own wedding photo experience and realizing how overwhelming it can be. I saw my wife dragging and dropping photos from one folder to other and thought there has to be a better way for non-photographer folks.
Right now, I have a working prototype, a landing page live, and I am testing distribution and feedback from early users.
I was the feature requestor for Claude Code Hooks - and have been involved in ai governance for quite awhile, this is an idea I'm excited about.
Ping below if you want to early beta test. everything is open source, no signups.
A place to build your corner of the internet.
Minimalistic site builder for portfolio, blog, or just link in bio to showcase your projects and ideas.
here’s mine: https://www.autogram.id/alex
Non-Profit to make cross-entity financial crime detection a reality using AI and establishing adequate data standards.
Volunteers welcome (-;
const activeAdults = from<User>("users")
.where((u) => u.age >= 18)
.where((u) => u.active === true);
It'll go into webpods (https://github.com/webpods-org/webpods), which is like firebase but with hash chains underneath.
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